Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother

by Rita Martin
whole-plate glass negative, 1907
Given by and an unknown source, 1907
Photographs Collection
NPG x41292

Sitterback to top

Artistback to top

  • Rita Martin (1875-1958), Photographer. Artist or producer associated with 314 portraits, Sitter in 7 portraits.

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Pepper, Terence, High Society: Photographs 1897-1914, 1998 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 30 January to 21 June 1998), p. 58 Read entry

    The fourth daughter of the 15th Earl of Strathmore and Kingborne, Lady Elizabeth married the Duke of York, the second son of George V, in 1923. She became Queen Elizabeth on her husband’s accession to the throne as George VI in 1936, and Queen Mother in 1952, when her daughter Elizabeth succeeded. As a beautiful child she was much photographed and painted. This portrait is one of a series taken of her and her younger brother David in 1907 by Rita Martin, a leading photographer of women and children.

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Events of 1907back to top

Current affairs

Robert Baden Powell, a former lieutenant-general in the British Army, forms the Boy Scout Movement after holding a camp on Brownsea Island for a group of twenty-two boys of mixed social background. Baden Powell was inspired after finding that his 1903 military training manual Aids to Scouting had become a bestseller, and was being used by teachers and youth workers. The Scout movement has become a Worldwide phenomenon, with over 38 million members in 216 countries.

Art and science

The poet, author and critic Edmund Gosse publishes his autobiography Father and Son, an account of his relationship with his devout Christian father, the zoologist Phillip Gosse. Edmund's detailing of his loss of faith is a reflection on the Victorian age itself.
Anna Pavlova first dances The Dying Swan, choreographed by Michel Fokine to music by Camille Saint-Saens, at a charity performance.

International

America is gripped by a financial crisis as a collapse of trust companies causes panic amongst shareholders.
Aged twenty, the Swiss architect Le Corbusier, one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century architecture, designs his first house at La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland.

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